The first astronauts on Mars will most likely wear smoking fetish gear that draws on the designs of MIT professor Dava Newman. Time magazine just named her ultralight BioSuit one of the top 100 inventions of the year. The current generation of spacesuits weighs up to 300 pounds, thanks to gas pressurization, life support and multiple layers of crap.

Newman was able to do away with most of that dead weight, thanks to her studies of how people move in outer space. Among other things, she's studied ways to modify beds and treadmills in space, so astronauts don't lose so much muscle mass and bone density. So the revolutionary BioSuit uses mechanical counterpressure (from tight inner layers) instead of gas to keep the suit pressurized. That way, the next generation of space explorers will look slinky and move easy. Image courtesy of MIT.